Subj : English skills
To   : Arelor
From : Spectre
Date : Thu Oct 20 2022 04:48:00

 Ar> /dev/null. A number of Editors for big pulp magazines outright say that
 Ar> they are unlikely to read past the first paragraph of each manuscript.
 Ar> The name of the game for them is Burning Through as Many Manuscripts
 Ar> as Possible. With so many manuscripts on their desks, anything that does
 Ar> not look fine from the get go is going into the trash bin.

 Ar> I think most good authors will generate fiction free from gaping plot
 Ar> holes, but that does not mean you need not look for those. When
 Ar> one is writing, things are christal clear in his head, but you have
 Ar> to check your ideas are conveyed to the readers properly.

I see this as a failure on the authors part that an editor/proof reader
shouldn't need to fix, if such failure exists it ought to be return to
sender to get it right.

 Ar> After being exposed to publisher's selection processes, I no longer think
 Ar> quality is what makes a money maker in the pulp market. I have seen
 Ar> quite a lot fine manuscripts kicked out so the Editor could work
 Ar> on mediocre ones instead. There is a lot of hidden criteria for
 Ar> selecting what gets worked on and what gets burnt at the stake,
 Ar> but I'd say if you write an average piece that can be sent to the
 Ar> press ASAP, you have much better chances of having the story bought
 Ar> than if you write a masterpiece which needs some extra adjustements
 Ar> to fit this month's magazine pagecount.

All this makes sense.  After all, the publisher is there to put together a
selection which while it might not be brilliant, will be acceptable. It will
need to fit the required page counts certainly for paper anyways as it will
be hiddeously expensive to exceed those numbers.

You'd expect that they'd have guidlines for word/page counts going in. I'd
also expect that some will sit on the back burner waiting for a time when the
page count fits goldilocks free page numbers in the "current" edition. So it
may take some time before anything appears to happen.

It strikes me as being an entire industry that can't be taken seriously as a
stand alone money making enterprise if you're going to write what you want
to write. To maximise your chances of any given story being used you'll need
to tailor your efforts to what fits in the publication you're sending scripts
to.

Spec


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